Importer connects with ancient marble, ancient skills

0614 Lewis Menaker

Dr. Lewis Menaker with a marble vase in his Vestavia Hills showroom.

When Lewis Menaker saw his nephew’s vacation photos, he couldn’t believe his eyes. It wasn’t the fact that Mark had backpacked for more than a year across some of the world’s most remote terrain in Asia, but rather his photograph of a group of marble vases he’d come across in a tiny village of the Himalayan foothills.

“The vases had patterns I’d never seen before in marble,” Menaker recalled. “I told Mark, ‘These can’t be real. Surely they’re ceramics that have been painted and glazed.’”

And though Menaker — retired from a 23-year career at UAB, including serving as associate dean of its dental school — admitted to “usually not traveling well,” he decided he had to see the wonders firsthand.

The result of that arduous trip, and subsequent ones, is an import business named HML Enterprises, which he operates from a showroom in Vestavia Hills with his niece and nephew.

As it turned out, the vases are meticulously made by craftsmen — known as the Bai tribe — whose ancestors’ works began decorating the palaces of Chinese emperors some 3,000 years ago.

To say that their workshops are off the beaten path is an understatement. The journey involves five different planes and then a bus trip through what Menaker describes as “five hours of breathtaking scenery,” followed by a taxi ride of nearly a half-hour and then a final 20 minutes in a horse-drawn cart.

But at the end of his journey, Menaker found unique varieties of marble that don’t exist anywhere else in the world, and workmen who have spent a lifetime learning the artistry of revealing the beauty in each individual chunk of rough stone. One day while looking at one of the village’s worn metal lathes he saw an inscription on its frame: LONDON, 1920.

The immediate challenge, however, was getting some of these treasures safely back to the United States.

“For example, nobody there knew more than a little bit of English, and for six months we were bringing out just a piece or two at a time to a warehouse we’d rented, because until we had enough to fill a container the shipping prices would’ve been prohibitive,” Menaker said. “But they’re wonderful people, and we worked out an agreement with them, and now everything’s fine.”

The geological basis for the marble’s unusually vivid colors and textures, he found, is that the Himalayas, the world’s youngest major mountain range, are located where there was once an ocean. It’s a type of marble known as fossiliferous, which shows a cross section of ancient oyster-like animals that were once part of the ocean bed but ended up at 10,000 feet above sea level after the violent collision of tectonic plates.

“The process of creating the marble pieces is the exact opposite of Western industrial efficiency,” Menaker said. “Each ‘factory’ we deal with is an individual person, and among the 1,250 pieces we have on display, you won’t find two that are identical. One thing that makes the craftsmen special is that they create the inside of a marble piece first, and then work on the outside to fit.”

One of Menaker’s most distinct memories from early in his working relationship with the village was saying to a craftsman, “I like this piece; I’ll take it,” and starting to pick it up. “The gentleman said, ‘No, no, no,’” Menaker recalled. “I finally realized that he planned to do another four to eight hours of hand work on a piece that looked perfectly good to me.”

Over the years, HML’s inventory has branched out considerably.

“When we started, people would come to us and buy these as burial urns, because the only extra feature a vase needs is a top,” Menaker said. “Today we sell about six different shapes to funeral homes and individuals. And a lot of people are cremating their pets now, so we’ve added smaller pieces made for pets.”

Other recent additions include a line of serving pieces — raised cake plates, fruit bowls and food platters for caterers — that have the added advantage of being temperature sensitive. If the marble is refrigerated beforehand, it keeps dishes cold.

Even with small pieces and simple shapes, he says, no two are exactly alike.

“It’s not the kind of process where we can say, ‘Each one needs to be 10 inches by four inches,’” he said. “They work to what the rock says.”

Another feature that sets the Tibetan marble apart is its range of colors. One type classified as simply “red” is what Menaker describes as “twice-converted” marble. “Marble comes from limestone; what converts it under the earth is temperature, pressure and time,” he said. “But when there are special conditions like earthquakes, sometimes the marble comes back together into these crazy patterns that meet and spread. You never know what’s inside, and the variations are tremendous.”

Other varieties are named depending on how they are cut. One type is called “dragon’s whiskers” when cut to the material’s plane, and “dragon’s eyes” when cut perpendicular. Another variety called “nine rivers” is the specialty of a single craftsman. Yet another is “green,” another “black-and-gold,” and another “snow flower.” Blue varieties are the most rare.

One of the distinctive kinds is a translucent marble, the geological structure of which resembles a fiber optic cable. Put a candle inside, and the material’s crystals transmit its glow.

HML’s showroom has a quiet, private feel, more like the back room of a museum than a bustling retail shop. Hours are by appointment only.

It’s been a long journey since Menaker held those color snapshots in his hand, piquing his curiosity.

“If we’d known all the problems we were going to face getting started, we probably never would have attempted it,” Menaker said. “But I’m very glad we did.”

To schedule a visit to the HML Enterprises showroom, contact Menaker at 276-9933, or hml.marble@gmail.com.